You are Arrogant, they told me

I was told in my late teens and early twenties by enough people for it to get to me that I was arrogant.

What I thought it meant was something like unsubstantiated confidence.

I didn’t want to come across that way so to be sure I looked it up.

The definition was something like

“Having or showing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities”.

They got me on one point, I did think and do think I’m important but that’s because I think EVERYONE is important.

I was raised on biblical stories which demonstrate over and over again that individuals who come from nothing can change the world and I truly believe that to be true.

As for having an exaggerated sense of my own abilities I couldn’t really say but I made the decision to:

1. STOP saying what I was going to do and just do it.

2. Only ever make claims of being able to do things I had done multiple times before.

Why am I telling you this?

I was reading something I wrote a few years ago about self talk.

“Beware of your words, of your thoughts and expressions. They will define you and become your obsessions.”

It’s true I think.

People carry around labels handed to them by other people.

Those people likely said them in a bid to remove their own discomfort by lashing out and then we pick up those words and proceed to beat ourselves to death with them for years to come.

I’m a loser, I’m fat, I’m arrogant, I’m shy, I’m weak, I’m pathetic, I’m a failure.

We take those things to heart and then act them out in the world as our thoughts determine our inner dialogue which in turn determines our actions.

I’m fat so I’ll act like I think a fat person would.

I’m a loser so I’ll act like a loser would.

We enter into a never ending spiral of self hatred or something.

Really what we’re looking at is a flaw in the English language.

We can’t actually BE any of those things.

Yes - we can follow a process that causes us to come across as arrogant and if we decided that enough people we care about think we are following that process we can assess our actions and change the process.

Yes - we can follow a process that resulted in our losing or failing but then right after we can assess that process and make adjustments and become more resilient and wise each time we do.

We can’t even be fat, not really. We can HAVE excess adipose tissue as our body and brain seeking to keep us alive as a response to the PROCESS we are currently following.

And that’s the point.

We can look at our negative self talk and we can isolate the exact process we are following to support that label and with that we can change both the script of our lives and start building a PROCESS for SUCCESS what ever that means to you.

But for God sake, speak more kindly to yourself you are a very IMPORTANT person.

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Christina Andersen, Nancy Gorgoglione and 8 others

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